Incorrect amount of available HD space displayed

This problem has been happening recently, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Over time, as I have my computer running it will show (on the info displayed at the bottom of every finder window) less and less memory available in my hard drive. Even if I'm not downloading anything or creating any new files or etc. It gets to the point where my computer warns me that my disk is almost full. So then I'll restart my computer, and the total amount of space will go back up to normal. Anybody know why this is happening? Thanks

Bill --
1. Download the app "WhatSize" and it will tell you the files that are taking up the most space. Click below for more info:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21149
2. Also, you can open & view the application Activity Monitor while you're running. (HD>Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor)
Select "All processes". It will show you percentage of usage.
Let us know what you find out, OK?

Similar Messages

Hello all, I went from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, and prior to Mavericks my hard drive folder and external hard drives for example would show me how much space I had available in each at the bottom of their windows when I would open them. Is this still available in Mavericks...? Hopefully I don't have to use Get Info every time I want to see... Thanks much, Zach

short cut to do this is while you have a finder window open
command + /

After the recent Mountain Lion update, my Finder now shows an incorrect amount of free space. I have a 500GB hard drive, and I have about 150GB free. After the update, finder says I have 478.4 GB free? That looks like the total capacity, after you account for system software. I've done a PRAM and SCM reset, disk verification and repair, but still no joy. Any thoughts? Is it a bug in the update?

Here is the answer....
zchrykng
Re: Hard drive available space shown incorrectly in finder Jan 12, 2012 7:35 PM (in response to ilari Korte)
This is probably like the issue that I was having on my MacBook Pro. If you are using Time Machine on a laptop it stores the diffs in a file on your hard drive. This action can be disabled with the terminal command
sudo tmutil disablelocal
This turns the local Time Machine off. It is up to you if you want to do this, but Finder shows this space as unused since it can be overwritten when needed. It saved me over a hundred GBs of space.
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

I think something is wrong with my MBP (2011, Mac OSX 10.7.5). It seems to be working ok but I think the available disc space is incorrect. In the Finder it says '233,65 gb available', in Disk Utility and About This Mac it says '77,47 GB available'. There's no way that I have 233 GB available space because my harddisk (320 GB) is filled with pictures and audio. Why is the Finder saying this? Does this have something to do with the local backups (77+156=233)? I did not erase any large files, nor did I disable the local backups in the terminal. Can anyone tell me if something is wrong with my harddisk? I rebooted but the number is still the same.

Thanks for your input, Ogelthorpe. I appreciate it!
I do believe though that it has something to do with the local backups. The local backups are 125 GB now, the available disc space according to 'about this mac' has gone up to 107 GB, and finder window says the available disc space is now 232 GB (and again: 125 + 107 = 232).
Today I did not move any files or delete any files, in fact, I did not use my Mac for about 8 hours. So how did the available disc space go up from 77 GB (last night) to 125 GB when I did not delete / change anything?
It might have something to do with the fact that a few days ago I downloaded about 50 GB's, I copied it to an external harddrive and deleted the files from my Mac then. Perhaps 'versions' of those files (about 1,2 GB each) still exist in the local backups.
Although I'm still intrigued by how everything works I decided to l let it go and stop worrying about it. Thanks again.

Hello again everyone. Thank you for solving my problem last time. This time I come with another problem I haven't seen anyone else answer. I think the title says it all. My laptop is telling me I have about 1GB left on my HD, but I KNOW there MUST be more available or there are a lot of hidden files that I can't find that are taking up gigs of space. I know that this is not right because I have had gigs of video files or the like on here before and still have 20GBs left just fine. (The total HD space I think is 55GB.) I have been deleting file after file after file and it keeps going down and down and down even when I have not downloaded or added anything to it. I have almost nothing left to delete save picture files which I definitely do not have 20GBs of. Also, when I open Photoshop, the available disk space goes down significantly (about 1GB). I close PS, disk space comes back. I restart my computer, some more disk space will come back. The most I've been up to recently is 2GB. If anyone has any ideas or solutions they are very much so appreciated. Thank you.

Awesome program. And it seems to have confirmed my suspicions.
I scanned what I believed to be the biggest folders of stuff: Applications, Documents, Music, and Library. The total for the four was just under 14GBs. 55 - 14 = 41GBs. Is there something I could have missed? I don't have any movies and the pictures folder came up to about 60MBs.
Where have these 41GBs gone to~?

How Can I Get the Amount of Free Disk Space using windows 7 please share example using GetDiskSpace i have already studied http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/9958B8E473C4EF1786256BBC0053B64F

Reading your question a bit more in detail, I doubt whether you are using Win32 API GetDiskFreeSpace function (for which my previous post is the solution) of Programmer's Toolbox GetDiskSpace function.
With reference to the second one, it works even with disks larger than 2GB but you need to use the proper formatting code to display the returned value. I updated my example to show total free space in the debug output window and added a comparison with 3GB value using UInt64TypeCompareUInt from the Programmer's Toolbox.

I'm using a MacBook Pro (March 2011) running 10.6.8. I just deleted (technically backed up to an external raid and then deleted from the system disk) about 8gb worth of files. However, in Finder and in Disk Utility, it shows 1.96GB available. That number is up a little and for awhile at least, was growing. I'm also experiencing this same problem on an external USB drive. I deleted about 3 gb worth of files, but the available disk space hasn't increased. I'm coming from the PC world, where, if you delete a bunch of stuff, the free disk space magically increases to show the correct amount. What gives? Thanks, Larry

Thanks.
I thought about that but a Genius at a local Apple store told me that whatever's in the Trash doesn't impact the total free disk space.
I suppose this means not all the Genuises (Geni?) are Geniuses?
Thanks,
Larry

My 800MHz PowerPC G3 iBook running OS 10.3.9 reports 4.3GB available when I open up the harddisk drive icon. When I choose View/List from the drop down menu and give enough time to calculate all the folder sizes and add up the reported size for each folder the sum comes to only about 7GB or so. This can't be quite right. I have emptied the trash so there's nothing there. Software Profiler reports my Hard disk to have a capacity of 27.94GB. So where are the other 15-16GB? I'd really li to know.

really I'd rather spend the time doing something else!
I suggest you do just that, Sergio. The Finder will report the size of visible files and folders only. Quite a bit is occupied by invisible files (including virtual memory swap files).
The available disk space reported by the Finder is correct. It's amount will vary depending on numerous factors, including how long the computer has been up.
If you're that interested in looking at all the files on your hard disk, fire up Terminal and enter the following command:
<code>defaults write com.apple.finder ShowAllFiles TRUE</code>
and relaunch the Finder.
To revert back replace <code>TRUE</code> with <code>FALSE</code> in the above command.
WARNING! Do not delete or move any of the invisible files or folders. They are essential parts of the system software. Moving or deleting them may render your OS inoperable, if you don't know what you're doing.

OK, I as read some of the posts I have a new problem under 10.5.2 update. Prior to running software update I had almost 120 gb free on my iMac 20 (last years model) After downloading, the update FAILED as it indicated i had only 300mb free and the update requires 1.3 gb. It rebooted anyway and after coming back up I still only have a faction (1.5gb) free of disk free. I knew this couldnt be true and using both the terminal DU command a using a utility called 'WhatSize' I confirmed I am only using 100gb of my 250 gb drive. I tried a repair using disk utility yet nothing. It almost appears the FS journaling is wrong or something. Any suggestion on how to get my disk reporting the right amount of space and applying the update? Many Thanks

I wanted to post an update on my own thread for a general sharing of information.
First, I ran a number of things to determine the delta. I ran the Verify Disk Utility--Result No change.
As I stated ran both the DU command and the "WhatSize" Utility, both indicating only 101gb used...
Finally decided to call AppleCare. After being on hold for the first 20 min and then dealing with a guy who did help at all for another 20 min, I was put back on hold for another 30min. The next person I spoke with had me try a few thigns (such as create a new 'Admin' Account and see how much Available disk space was showing under that account' Same amount....Finally he told me ai needed to do an 'Archive and Install' Well after rebooting into the Leopard DVD it woudl not allow that as I didnt have enough Disk Space. He then suggested backing the Users directory up and doing an Erase and Install. Not being overly fond of that I decided to do some additional research on my own.
Recognizing the 10.5 is really UNIX underneath, there had to be other ways to verify the root File System. recalling back from many years ago, I recalled a command similar to the Windows Chkdsk, called Fschk. Looking up how to run on MAC OS X i determined I could in fact boot into single user mode.
Geting to the command line, I ran the command to no avail....Drive still should only 1.5 gb free. and no errors running that command. HOWEVER>.........
If I now ran the DU command to 1 depth level '-d1' it showed my the Users folder at 224gb (different then the 58gb run when in my own admin account'
After some further digging I discovered a 119gb file under another account and specifically appeared tied to the iDisk of that account. I was unable to 'remove' the file and I didnt want to change the UNIX permissions to access it so I rebooted, and opened that specific account. Upon login it started a process that indicated it was Compacting the iDisk.Sparsebundle account....after about 10 min---the file was compacted and viola...back to my 126gb free.
So, what I determined is that this account was in fact logged in while System Update was run on the Admin account. During the update and reboot it didnt properly shut that account down and the iDisk seemed to grow exponentially....
bottom line: I fixed the problem with some more thorough investigation and WITHOUT a Erase and Install as recommended by AppleCare...that seems to have been the easy way out for them and would have been the hard way out for me having to reinstall all my apps etc. Since MAC OS is really unix there are so many ways to fix things without reinstalling...How many people really reinstall UNIX in production environments at the littlest problems....
Message was edited by: jrjeffOH

I run TM on a 2tb TC. In the TM pane, "Available:", no longer shows the amount of disk space available, it just shows, "--". I recently upgraded the TC and that's when I think it started...but I'm not positive. Any clues? Thanks!

This may be a development with Lion. Do you run TM from a partition on your machine Hard Drive or do you use an external HD.
I use a Lacie external HD and when I go to preferences, it shows the amount of available space left. I've yet to progress to Lion though (waiting for Mountain Lion)

Disk Utility and Finder tells me that I only have 8 GB of available space left on my 150GB hard drive. I knew this amount was wrong and I tried OMNI Disc Sweeper that confirmed that I"m only using 52GB of the hard drive. How do I rectify this and have the computer recognize the correct amount of available hard drive space?

You could try and see if the boot installer disc's version of Disk Utility
on the Installer disc of the OS X version you are running, can repair
this disk. It may be a simple matter of how the system reads any
tags on the old data on the drive which was set to be over-written by
the system. A good third party disk utility for your version of OS X
should be able to check and repair most issues if Apple's Disk Utility
may balk at some of the more tedious issues.
Also, if you boot into SafeBoot mode and then run the installed version
of Disk Utility and have it 'repair disk permissions' then when it is done,
quit Disk Utility, and restart the computer normally; that may help and
is non-invasive. And it usually does more good and no harm.
If there actually is a problem on the low-level of the hard disk drive
which may be causing this capacity available volume read error, one
of the cures short of a third party disk utility such as Disk Warrior or
Drive Genius2, using Apple Disk Utility, could be accomplished if
you happened to already be in the habit of making and using full
computer clones of the entire hard drive content on to an external
hard disk drive. Then you could have your full backup, and be able
to totally wipe the hard disk drive, zero-overwrite the old data, and
reformat the hard disk drive (and use repair disk) from the booted
installer disc's Disk Utility; then move back a full clone of your Mac.
Forgoing that option, if what you already have can do the job, then
you can save the other choices and investments for another day.
Good luck & happy computing !

I need to monitor the available disk space of the archive directory during a long running PL/SQL program which does a lot of inserts and updates. This program is running in a background session and should regularly check for the available space. If there is less then a customizable number of MBs free the program must terminate itself. How can I access this information from the file system? (I'm using 8.1.6 and the application will run on both AIX and NT)

The directory itself is not taking space (It actually does but in most cases you can neglect its size). It is files that it has that take space. Also, the more files you create the more space gets allocates from the media that holds them. And the last, the media (Hard Drive, Floppy, or other) has free space, not directory. That is how all OS's that I know about work.

Maybe you are looking for

I once created a BW report through the portal and it had buttons at the top so once I had filtered my query the way I wanted it I could click the graph button at the top of the screen and automatically graph it. That was very cool! Now I can't reme

Hey, I recently move my iWeb Domain to a new Macbook Pro..after Published the iWeb...the message window shown visit the website as web.me.com/xxx instead www.xxx.com Why? i try to reset the personal domain in MobileMe ,remove it and add it again...no

When I drag and drop a subvi into my current VI it works perfectly. However, the subVI has an absolute path that points to somebody else's code on my computer. I would prefer not to point my code to somebody else's code because if they decide to de